Petru Groza - Early Life and Career

Early Life and Career

Born as one of the three sons of a wealthy couple in Băcia, a village near Deva in Transylvania (part of Austria-Hungary at the time), Groza was afforded a variety of opportunities in his youth and early career to establish connections and a degree of notoriety which would later prove essential in his political career. After graduating from the Reformed Church College in Orăştie, he began his Law training in Hungary, studying at the University of Budapest before attending both the University of Leipzig and the University of Berlin.

By the eve of World War I, Groza had completed his studies and returned to Deva to work as a lawyer. In 1918, he emerged on the political scene as a member of the Romanian National Party (PNR) and obtained a position on the Directory Council of Transylvania, convened by ethnic Romanian politicians who had voted in favour of union with Romania; he maintained his office over the course of the following two years.

Throughout this period of his life, Groza established a variety of political connections, working in various Transylvanian political and religious organizations. From 1919 to 1927, for example, Groza obtained a position as a deputy in Synod and Congress of the Romanian Orthodox Church. In the early 1920s, Groza, who had left the PNR after a conflict with Iuliu Maniu and had joined the People's Party, began to serve as the Minister for Transylvania and Minister of Public Works and Communications in the Alexandru Averescu cabinet.

During this period in his life, Groza was able to amass a personal fortune as a wealthy landowner and establish a notable reputation as a prominent layman within the Romanian Orthodox Church, a position which would later make him invaluable to a Romanian Communist Party (PCR) that was campaigning to attract the support of Eastern Orthodox Christians who constituted the nation's most numerous religious group in 1945.